Wednesday, 02/10/09

Math
Today, we worked on finding common denominators. If you have 3/15 and 1/3, you can multiply 1/3 by 5/5 to get 5/15 which has the same denominator as 3/15. It was challenging to me but pretty fun to figure out. If you're dealing with fractions that have different denominators, you can always try this skill. It's helpful to use most of the time. Some numbers were hard to figure out but I eventually got them. We worked on a couple pages of this lesson in our math journal and had a worksheet of this skill for homework... odd numbered problems only so we can sleep for the PSSA test.

Language Arts
Today, we worked on homographs, homonyms, and homophones. We watched a Brain Pop video on the three of them. Homophones are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently. For example, bass is type of guitar and base means a spot in baseball. We took a quiz that is worth 10 points and on the back, we had to list and draw a pair of homophones. I did red and read. Red for the color and read for don reading a book. It was pretty easy.

Science
Today, we did our lab on how to make a model of a fossil. We took three pieces of clay and mushed them to the bottom of a cup flatly. We made three layers of this then grabbed a plastic thing. There were fake teeth, ammonites, and other things. We used the plastic thing to make a mold by pressing it on the clay layers. After that, we filled in the lab questions. The lab isn't quite done though. The teacher will fill the cup with plaster to make our fossil a cast. I'm excited to see how it turns out.